ANSI Tackles Standards for Research

As the effort to harmonize data standards to support interoperable electronic health records continues, one standards development organization wants to insure the standards also support clinical research and decision support functions.

The American National Standards Institute is soliciting funds for the project and already has contributions from 27 organizations. They primarily consist of academic medical centers, health information technology vendors and pharmaceutical firms. Six federal agencies also have contributed.

The project started in late 2008 after the Department of Health and Human Services asked ANSI to bring together experts to develop a use case for standards harmonization in the clinical research arena.

ANSI is looking for another $100,000 in funding to enable the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel to work through interoperability specifications to support clinical research.